In today’s update on the Google Phone, we get a few new pieces of information, chief among them the rumored name. The “Google Phone,” previously seen under the HTC Passion codename, is the Nexus One. This is the phone that Google employees are “dogfooding” (testing before its released to others).

You’ve probably already heard that the Nexus One is supposed to be a Google-branded phone designed by HTC, which could head to a T-Mobile carrier deal. Though I guessed that it is probably a holiday gift for Google employees, more information and vague hysteria has emerged to make me wonder if Google will actually attempt to sell its own phone.

Just as people suggested in tweets earlier, the “Google Phone” is the same as the HTC Passion we saw in previous leaked images. The Passion has been spotted without HTC branding by a marketing agency employee who tweeted this image:

The phone is called the “Nexus One” according to Daring Fireball.People began searching “Nexus One” on Picasa and were able to turn up quite a few images taken by the device (note: photos often contain background information called EXIF data that reveals certain information, such as what device was used to take the photo). Here are a few reported images that illustrate the Nexus’ image quality.

Google has already said that it will not comment on anything, all but admitted that something’s going on in their blog post yesterday. What exactly that is? No one knows yet. The Google Phone dance lives for another day.